


Lasting

by elistaire



Series: Highlander50 Prompt Response [5]
Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-04
Updated: 2011-04-04
Packaged: 2017-10-17 13:55:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elistaire/pseuds/elistaire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tessa and Richie look at some old photographs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lasting

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Highlander 50 prompt challenge. Prompt: Lasting

"Oh, my hair," Tessa said with a small amused groan, and flipped the page in the photo album.

"Yeah," Richie said, in agreement. "But you look so young!" He covered his mouth with his hand as soon as the words popped out. "I mean--" He stumbled for the right phrase to take it back. "I just meant that you looked really pretty. Not that you aren't pretty now! Just, that you were young. Too young. My age young. Like a baby. In a cradle."

Tessa raised an eyebrow, letting him dangle on his own hook for a moment. She'd teach him to be delicate where a woman's tender spots were concerned. "Oh? So, Mac was cradle robbing? This picture was taken the year that we met."

He covered his face with his hands and slumped forward. "Just forget the whole thing, okay? I never said a word. Not a peep."

"Of course." Tessa flipped more pages. "The styles were of the times." She pointed to a particular picture of her and MacLeod sitting at a table with a white tablecloth. "Our first anniversary together. I loved that dress." She ran her fingers along the edge of the photo, remembering the night. It seemed so crystal clear in some parts, like the dress she had worn, which was terribly out of fashion now, but that she still kept tucked away in the very back of her closet. She hadn't looked at it in years, but she liked knowing it was there. Other parts of the night had slipped away from her. What had she been doing earlier in the day? Where had they parked? Had she ordered dessert?

"Pretty swanky eats," Richie said. He peered at the photo. "What's wrong with Mac's shirt?"

Tessa grinned. "It was all the rage at the time. They don't cut them in that style anymore."

"Thank god." Richie flipped the page to the next set of photos and his eyes grew large.

Tessa cleared her throat. "Let's skip those. It was a vacation to Bermuda." She pushed over several pages in a row until the bikini photos were buried again.

The next several pages just held worse depictions of the fashions of the time. Richie hooted and slapped his leg at Mac's Don Johnson-style stubble and the awful parachute pants that the rappers of the day had made popular, looking more like space-age tent material than clothing.

"What possessed you guys to wear that stuff?"

"Fashion never lasts, Richie." She pointed to his eye-catching green jacket hanging on a chair across the room. "Case in point. Give it five years and you'll wonder why you ever bought that."

Richie snorted and shook his head. "That jacket cost me a mint. It's a one of a kind."

"Just wait," she said. "Things that seem acceptable now--in fact, if you didn't dress that way, others might think you were odd--will all look dated one day. Fashion is always changing."

She flipped to a new set of photos and was reminded of the poodle-perm she'd had for a very, very short time. It had been such a mistake to get it. Thank goodness it had flattened out a few weeks later. Still, it reminded her of a happy time. Duncan had been taken by it. He'd liked running his fingers through her hair, playing with it, ticking her cheeks with the ends. No, even though it had been ridiculous looking, she wouldn't go back and change it.

"Maybe the fashions don't last," she told Richie, "but the memories do. And that's what the photos capture. Reminders of all the good times. Sometimes the sad ones also, but mostly the good."

"And the laughs," Richie added, with a jab of his finger on a particularly dopey photo of Tessa and Duncan wearing over-large sombreros, holding their drinks up in a salute to the photographer. Somehow, they'd both been caught half-blinking, looking as if aliens had just brought them back to the planet. "Don't forget the laughs."

Tessa covered her eyes. "Yes, the embarrassment does seem to last forever." She closed the book with a snap, missing Richie's fingers by a whisper, for which she was sorry -- she should have caught them in the book, that would have taught him! "Enough reminiscing for one day. Go, go, go. Do something else--shoo!"

Richie flashed her a wicked grin as he waltzed away. "I've been waiting for a rainy day to go through those old trunks in storage. I bet there're clothes in 'em!"

"Oh, no, don't you dare!" She dashed after him.


End file.
